Bookmark this page and visit it often to keep track of news about puzzlenode,
including new problems or fixes to existing problems. You can also keep track
of new announcements through this page's
RSS feed

If you think you have found a defect in one of our puzzles and it is not listed
below, contact us at puzzlenode@gmail.com. You may also be able to find help
by checking out the #mendicant channel on Freenode.

I'm very happy to announce that PuzzleNode has a new home on Heroku. A crack team of developers helped prep the app for the transition. If you're interested in seeing what it takes to do something like that, check out the ticket over on GitHub. Of course anytime you do a migration like this there is the potential for failure. If you encounter any issues just let us know by opening a ticket on GitHub.

I hope that this move will breathe new life into PuzzleNode and inspire people to submit patches and new puzzles for the site. Thanks for playing!

Ever wonder how you're doing in the rankings, but aren't part of the elite top 10? Well wonder no more! Thanks to Adriano Bacha, PuzzleNode's leaderboard now shows the 5 people above and below your current leaderboard position!

To see where you stand, just login and visit the leaderboard page. Scroll past the top 10 to find "people close to your rank". Your rank is highlighted in orange and you can always check your current rank by visiting your profile page.

If you don't see your rank, odds are you haven't submitted a correct solution, so keep hacking on those puzzles and remember to have fun.

Poor Man's FORTH: Implement an interpreter for a simple stack based programming language

While the ideas for these problems are my own, Andrea Singh (@madebydna) and Jia Wu (@sindhri) were responsible for most of the implementation work. Additionally, several students from the Mendicant University alumni network helped test out the puzzles before launch to help make sure they don't have obvious defects. Those are the folks to thank if you end up enjoying these puzzles.

Secret Messages Decoding a secret message that has been encoded via two classic ciphers

While the ideas for these problems are my own, Andrea Singh (@madebydna) did a ton of work to get them to a releasable state, including writing up all the problem descriptions. Addiitonally, several students from the Mendicant University alumni network helped test out the puzzles before launch to help make sure they don't have obvious defects. Those are the folks to thank if you end up enjoying these puzzles.

Yesterday we rolled out a brand new way to calculate the official PuzzleNode leaderboard. In the past, users were ranked using the following criteria:

Highest number of correct submissions

Lowest number of attempts

Earliest creation date of the last correct submission

This worked, but it unnecessarily penalized users who might have had slight formatting issues with their solution file, or even worse, discovered bugs in our puzzles. The new system removes number of attempts from the equation and instead ranks based on these criteria:

Highest number of correct submissions

Earliest creation date of the last correct submission

Hopefully this will encourage more people to try out the puzzles and climb the leaderboard. If you've got a different idea for our leaderboard or anything in PuzzleNode, feel free to fork the project and send over a pull request!

Those who are attending RailsConf/BohConf are invited to participate in a contest hosted by Ruby Mendicant University during the conference. Here's how you can participate:

Check out the puzzles here on PuzzleNode to see what they're all about.

Log in via github to create an account here on PuzzleNode.

Find Gregory Brown (@seacreature) or Jordan Byron (@Jordan_Byron) at any time during BohConf and let them know that you want to participate. All you need to tell us is your name and Github login name, but you need to do it in person so we know you're at the conference.

Solve puzzles #5, #6, #7, #8

The first to solve all four problems will win a Kindle 3G, we've brought it to the conference with it, so we'll give it to you immediately.

In addition to the competition, because this is an RbMU event, there is a teaching component as well. Our staff and alumni are volunteering to provide code reviews for those who want to improve their coding style. We won't give you answers to the problems, but we'll be happy to help with evaluating the code you've already written. Since Gregory is the author of Ruby Best Practices, even relatively experienced developers may end up learning a thing or two.

We've updated the footer of the site to include a brief description of what PuzzleNode is about and included contact information for how to reach us. Additionally, Brandon Hays has volunteered to help us handle user support and the production side of PuzzleNode. He will be available through our contact email address (puzzlenode@gmail.com), but can also be found in the #rmu channel on Freenode with the handle tehviking.

Having someone dedicated to handling bug reports, suggestions, and the testing and launching of new puzzles will really help make sure that PuzzleNode has a solid user experience even when Jordan and I are too busy with Ruby Mendicant University to actively think about it. While we were initially off to a rocky start, we're hoping that it'll be smooth sailing from here on out.

It'll be at least a couple weeks before more puzzles are posted, but we think the ones we have up now are finally pretty stable. Please keep hacking on them, and let us know what you think!

Our first week was one that showed the promise of PuzzleNode, but also exposed several weaknesses in our execution of the initial release of this project. I wrote some thoughts about PuzzleNode on my personal blog that give a bit of back story to the problems we faced, and our plans to avoid them in the future.

Should have another announcement here tomorrow which outlines our support system.

This project was developed, maintained, and supported by Mendicant
University students and staff until the school
changed directions
and put a hold on all existing projects, including PuzzleNode. If you
are interested in jump starting this project just open a ticket in our
issue tracker
to get the ball rolling.